


Touch

by ajejunestar (ohmyjetsabel)



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Dubious Consent, Happy Ending, Hate Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-29
Updated: 2011-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:03:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyjetsabel/pseuds/ajejunestar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a hate!sex prompt on the tsn_kinkmeme. Mark and Eduardo’s post-laptop-smash hate!sex makes a bad situation worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt: http://tsn-kinkmeme.livejournal.com/9415.html?thread=17240775#t17240775

Later, Mark will distract himself with the petty details of blame.  
  
Who threw the first punch?  
  
It’s insignificant in the grander scheme. Eduardo threw the first punch, he didn’t notice Mark’s eyes on him those late nights at Kirkland, buzzed and restless. Mark threw the first punch, he was dismissive of Eduardo’s affection, shrugged hands off his shoulder and took advantage of his kindness at every turn. Eduardo threw the first punch, he didn’t come out to Palo Alto when Mark begged him to, when Mark was ready to give it all. Mark threw the first punch, he diluted Eduardo’s shares and pushed him out of his life, spiteful and just plain bitter.  
  
Really, they’d been throwing punches their entire friendship.  
  
So the fact is, Mark has this thing about touch. No one touches Mark. It makes him anxious. His mother tried to diagnose it once as some form of psychological condition in his early teens, but Mark didn’t have the patience for it.  
  
Only Mark lets Eduardo touch him, sometimes. Just superficial contact. Brushes of a hand. Playful kicks against shoe-covered toes. A palm on his shoulder blade.  
  
Mark let the touches come in stages for a reason. It’s all been conditioning for his mind. _Don’t fear this, you want this, you want more than this, get used to this, you like this, ask for more._  
  
It was all preparation for something that will never actually happen, and it doesn’t matter that Mark is officially to blame.  
  
It’s like losing a limb.  
  
So it’s no surprise to Mark, finding Eduardo at the house when he returns. They couldn’t have it out proper in the office. Not with Sean looking on, ready to call out the dogs and skew the odds in Mark’s favor. Not with Dustin there to give disappointed glances and speeches about The Power of Friendship.  
  
Mark knew the second Eduardo heaved that laptop into the air and smashed it into a mangled piece of plastic and capacitors that this moment was coming, brewing and festering beneath the surface of juvenile snark and flying spittle.  
  
And see, the truth is, Mark’s been positively itching for that human contact he can’t quite stomach. It’s nothing tangible. Nothing he’s even been able to put his finger on until just this moment, when it’s too far out of reach to even see.  
  
If he wasn’t conditioning himself for _that_ , then okay. He’s been conditioning himself for _this_.  
  
It’ll do.  
  
The particles between them, the air of the room, the surface of his scalp and the pores of his skin—they’re all charged and buzzing.  
  
Eduardo’s not mad. That’s a bad word. A small word. Too simple. Black and white. Nothing about this could be so easy. The fact is, Eduardo is something else. Something darker and quiet—scary not because Mark is intimidated, but because he feels the same way, and he wants this.  
  
He’s relieved on the inside that it won’t go to waste.  
  
“I can’t fucking believe you,” Eduardo says.  
  
He’s lying. It’s all in his eyes, leaned against the corner of the room, head pressed into the wall.  
“After everything, Mark,” he continues. “Really? After everything I’ve done for you, you just—“  
  
“Can’t say I didn’t warn you.” Mark shrugs.  
  
So it’s Eduardo who throws the first punch. Physically, at least. Mark wishes he could say it comes out of nowhere, but that’s a lie too. It comes in slow motion and he indexes every detail. The furl of Eduardo’s eyebrows, the cording of muscle in his neck, the flush to his cheeks and the raise of his fist.  
  
Mark’s almost completely sure Eduardo doesn’t even realize what he’s doing. His fist hits Mark’s jaw at an odd, grazing angle. There is that sickly crack of bone on bone, and it does hurt—God, it’s excruciating—but it’s hardly Eduardo’s best. If Eduardo had planned it better, he could have hurt Mark more.  
  
Mark supposes that’s an aptitude better suited for himself.  
  
He staggers back only half a step, shakes off the fuzz around his vision and straightens his shoulders. Eduardo’s face is clouded now, less severe, and his mouth falls open. Mark can tell by the size of his wide eyes what Eduardo’s going to say. _I’m sorry_ or _Are you alright?_ or _I got carried away, I didn’t mean to..._  
  
Mark’s thinking No. No, he will not let Eduardo back down from this. He will not let Eduardo take this away from him. He will not let this moment pass half-executed, like everything else between them.  
  
So Mark throws the second punch. It lands better than Eduardo’s had, good enough that Mark can feel the skin of Eduardo’s soft lower lip splitting against his knuckle. Enough that he has to fight the instinct to catch Eduardo when he topples backward and crashes haphazard into the arm of the sofa.  
  
They both throw the third punch. Mark’s surprised at first by the synchronicity of it, but then he’s mostly just satisfied.  
  
They’re finally on the same page now. No skirting or avoidance, no pulling back or drawing in, no shutting up or shutting down. They’re finally graceful, and even though both of them probably could, neither dodge the impact of that third punch, they just take it.  
  
It’s Mark who tackles Eduardo. They crash to the ground with grunts. Eduardo has a fistful of Mark’s shirt, knees him in the stomach and manages to flip them around. Mark lands another punch, but isn’t able to pull his elbow back far enough to make it good. Eduardo is. He gets Mark right below his eye and the pain is sharp, temporary blindness, brief alarm.  
  
Mark’s able to push Eduardo off with nothing more than the adrenaline-force of his arms. He doesn’t know, maybe Eduardo lets him, but Mark takes to kicking Eduardo at where he’s hunched on the floor. Once on the knee, again in the thigh, and then higher, in the belly, enough to make him double over for only a second.  
  
Eduardo meets Mark when he stands, lands another punch that doesn’t matter, because they just tumble to the floor again, grappling like that, rolling and holding strategically, occasional fists flying and clicking against bone or accidentally soft flesh.  
  
It could last a minute. It could last three hours. They’re huffing and crimson-faced, and Mark takes more satisfaction than he expects in the rigid cut of Eduardo’s sneer and faint chokes of breath as they wrestle. The world—or maybe just the house—crashes and shatters around their strangleholds and vice grips. A head slammed into a wall, a foot kicked into a table leg for leverage, a body slammed into an open door. Mark thinks they’ll kill each other like this.  
  
It bothers him less than it should.  
  
At one point they pause, more to gulp in oxygen than anything. Eduardo holds Mark’s hands to the side long enough to sit still, angle his head up and gasp in air. It’s clear to Mark, this isn’t over. This pause is just an intermission.  
Mark clenches his fists and yanks, pulls. Eduardo meets his eyes and grunts as he struggles to hold him prostrate. Mark kicks and bucks, slams his feet into the floor and heaves himself up.  
  
Eduardo slams him back to the ground.  
  
He holds his shoulders this time, lets Mark knock futilely at his back with his balled fists and claw the skin with his fingertips when that yields no results.  
  
Eduardo’s still out of breath, struggling to fill his lungs, rocking with each of Mark’s bursts. His skin is as red as Mark’s feels, and every time Mark pulls or pushes against his hold, Eduardo’s eyes grow big and fiery. His lips pull back to expose a perfect row of pearly white teeth.  
  
Mark kisses him.  
  
It’s nothing more than a brush of his lips. Could have been accidental, but they both know better.  
  
He tastes blood.  
  
Eduardo’s mouth is full of it.  
  
“Don’t fucking push me,” Eduardo screams, palm thumping into the floor close to Mark’s ear. He rocks forward, taking the pressure off Mark’s abdomen and putting it onto his shoulders. He pushes him into the floor like he wishes—and he probably does—that it was Mark’s throat beneath his fingers instead of sharp, boney joints. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”  
  
Mark laughs. It’s not like this is funny—it’s clearly not. It’s not that kind of laugh. Mark can’t stop it from bubbling in his stomach, rising to his chest, and emerging in little maniacal bounces. He’s only half-lying when he says, “Yep.”  
  
Eduardo’s eyes grow brighter, alight with something close to murderous. “Yeah, that’s all you ever wanted. A credit card number and my dick in your ass, isn’t that right?”  
  
Mark can hardly breathe he’s laughing so hard. He nods. “Yeah, your dick in my ass,” but the last part is cut off into a high, keening wheeze of a chuckle.  
  
Eduardo punches him again.  
  
Mark laughs harder.  
  
He thinks he’s probably losing it.  
  
He thinks that’s probably for the best.  
  
Eduardo hits him again, knuckles against jaw. And again. And again. Mark wishes he could say this quiets him, but it doesn’t. The laughter just keeps coming, as sure as the fist against his face, as sure as the carpet scratching into his back and the sweat beading on his chest beneath fleece and cotton.  
  
“This is what you want,” Eduardo’s panting, and Mark can’t see the details because his eyes are watery from all the laughing, but he can make out vague movement near Eduardo’s stomach, can hear the metallic sounds of a belt being undone.  
  
He blinks up at Eduardo and is unable to stop a wide grin from swallowing his face. “Yes.”  
  
Eduardo flips him over. Mark’s sweatpants and boxers get ripped away in one motion and he’s exposed to the air. He kicks at the pants around his ankles to free himself from them, rising to his knees so he can rock back against Eduardo, laughing, “Come on, Wardo. Come on, give it to me.”  
He hears Eduardo spit.  
  
It’s only when he spreads Mark that the laughter dies in his throat.  
  
The blunt tip of Eduardo, spit-slicked against Mark’s hole makes him pause.  
  
Mark is shaking. “Wardo, wait.”  
  
He grabs Mark’s hip hard enough to draw blood. “Wait for what? Don’t chicken out on me now.”  
  
Mark lowers his forehead to the carpet and lets his eyes fall closed.  
  
He’s suddenly very tired. “Do it.”  
  
He doesn’t make a sound when Eduardo forces himself inside, only half-hard. Mark gnashes his teeth and grinds his wrists into the rough carpet. He instinctively inches away, can’t help it really, but Eduardo pulls him into a half-hearted thrust.  
  
Mark swallows a scream, feels a vein in his temple thump thump thump. “Harder,” he commands, choking on something in the back of his throat. Maybe saliva, probably blood—this time his own.  
  
Eduardo obeys.  
  
Mark’s never felt so much pain in his life. It’s like being ripped in half. Like something is tearing him open from anus to throat. It’s all Mark can do to muffle the sounds he can’t quite trap inside his chest, to mask them as laughter instead of whimpers.  
  
It only gets worse when Eduardo grows fully erect. Mark can’t help pulling away, even though his mouth says _More Harder Faster You’re Such A Little Bitch, Wardo_ until he’s all the way inside, so deep that skin slaps against skin and Mark’s flat on the floor again to get away from it. His toes struggle for purchase against the carpet to push him forward, but Eduardo’s pinning him down.  
  
Eduardo grabs his shoulder to keep him still. “Either you want it or you don’t,” he snaps.  
  
“Come on,” he says, and Mark stops struggling. “Fuck me.”  
  
It’s not so difficult to give in and fade out, to focus on Eduardo’s fingers yanking his face away from the carpet by his hair, and the sounds he makes from behind Mark, grunting words into his ear. Things like, “There it is, take it,” and “Knew you’d get off on this, you sick fuck,” and best of all, “I hate you. I hate you, Mark. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You did it, I fucking hate you.”  
  
Mark doesn’t know what happens here. If you ask him much later down the line, Mark might say okay. His mother might have been right. Maybe Mark does have some kind of psychological screw loose, because something inside Mark just breaks.  
  
He opens his mouth to make a snappy retort, but all that emerges is a wet, broken sob.  
  
He can’t remember the last time he cried. Possibly when Mark was twelve and he crashed his bike and skinned his knee, there was something like a tear, but it was more out of frustration than anything.  
  
He can’t stop it now. The best Mark can do is bury his face into the carpet and muffle the sounds of it. Deep from his stomach, forcing its way up his throat, making his body seize and clench. Eduardo fucks him faster.  
  
All that laughter finally makes sense to Mark then.  
  
It was just his body’s way of preventing this.  
  
*  
  
Eduardo does stop, eventually. Mark doesn’t know at first whether or not he’s come, because when he pulls out, all Mark can feel is fire and raw and an impulse to fold his knees closer to his body, even though he can’t even move.  
  
Nothing happens.  
  
Eduardo doesn’t make any sounds of movement from his position above Mark, and Mark would love to make a sarcastic observation about it all, but the thing is—  
  
He just keeps _crying_.  
  
It’s annoying and inconvenient.  
  
He waits for Eduardo to say something about it. Mark’s not sure how to predict this one. He’ll either do a three-sixty and want to know if Mark’s okay, or get pissed off that Mark has somehow found a loophole to play the victim.  
  
Mark waits for something to happen; long enough that his deep, guttural sobs dwindle into breathless hiccups and strings of spitbloodsnot.  
  
He’s still shaking.  
  
There are finally sounds of shifting fabric, belt buckle dings, shoes against carpet.  
  
Mostly they’re disappearing behind Mark.  
  
*  
  
It’s not long after Eduardo’s left that Mark pulls himself up from the floor. He doesn’t do it as gingerly as he should, and most of his breaths are more sobs than anything, but he forces himself into the bedroom because someone’s bound to come home sooner or later, and really, Mark can’t explain any of _that._  
  
He locks the door.  
  
His pants are still laying somewhere in the hall, but that’s not odd. Someone’s pants are always laying somewhere in this house.  
  
He gets under the blankets and falls asleep instantly.  
  
Mark can’t remember ever sleeping so well.  
  
*  
  
Dustin comes home after the light has faded from the windows. “Mark?”  
  
He keeps knocking.  
  
Mark doesn’t answer.  
  
“Are you dead in there? Because I’m pretty sure ninjas broke into our house and vandalized… everything?”  
  
Mark stares at the wall across the room.  
  
“Mark? I know I’m all quippy and stuff and it’s hard to tell, but I’m sort of worried here.” Dustin makes a muffled laugh that’s more nervous than anything.  
  
Mark says, “I’m fine,” so that he’ll leave, but it doesn’t work.  
  
“Do you have a gripping tale about a ninja encounter? We’re all waiting with bated breath.”  
  
“Go away, Dustin.”  
  
“It’s just that—” Dustin lowers his voice, “We all heard about Wardo.”  
  
“Go away!” Mark throws something at the door that misses by a mile because turns out, it was just a piece of paper.  
  
He doesn’t have the strength to look for something heavier.  
  
Mark hears Dustin sigh and knows he doesn’t leave, even after ten minutes pass and nothing more is said.  
  
He finally asks, “On a scale of one to ten, one being My Little Pony and ten being Chuck Norris, how bad is it?”  
  
Silence.  
  
“I promise to leave you alone, even if it’s Chuck Norris Bad. Okay? I just… I have to know what I’m dealing with here. Mark?”  
  
Mark looks at his hand, balled into a fist around the blanket. It’s bloody and swollen, and Mark doesn’t even wonder how Eduardo’s face must feel.  
  
He answers, “One hundred.”  
  
*  
  
To Dustin’s credit, and later, when Mark can fully appreciate it, he really is rather impressed, he does give Mark the minimum amount of attention possible in a situation described as badder than Chuck Norris.  
  
He knocks sometimes, probably just to make sure Mark’s still alive. He doesn’t pester him to eat, or ask if he’s okay, or to complain about the broken coffee table or the Wardo-Head-Shaped hole in the wall.  
  
He just knocks.  
  
Mark grunts.  
  
That’s it.  
  
And it’s fortunate to Mark, who drifts in and out of consciousness and can’t really muster an ounce of effort anyway. He’s free to ride out whatever state of numbness he’s in. It’s ironic, he thinks during one of his rare moments of semi-lucidity, that everyone once thought him a complete and total robot, and now he is less than one.  
  
A robot would probably leave his bed to piss.  
  
*  
  
Mark wakes to damp, smelly sheets and realizes long after he should that it’s urine.  
  
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, has long lost the ability to measure time in increments that don’t include periods of consciousness, but he knows the sheets are merely damp and not wet.  
  
He feels a faint sensation of disgust, and then a faint sensation of relief that he’s regaining the ability to feel anything.  
  
Truthfully, Mark’s been a little worried, too.  
  
He knows the numbness isn’t normal.  
  
He thinks about standing, taking a shower—or a bath, since the shower was broken months ago—but one twitch of his leg is enough to send pain shooting through his body like knife-lightening.  
  
So he falls asleep in a puddle of his own urine.  
  
Again.  
  
But he’s seriously grossed out about it this time.  
  
That’s something.  
  
That’s not numb.  
  
*  
  
The knocking came and Mark grunted.  
  
It didn’t stop.  
  
He feels like he can’t even talk, wishes Dustin would just deduce that from some kind of intuition, but he doesn’t.  
  
He keeps knocking.  
  
It gets really loud.  
  
It gets so loud.  
  
There’s a crash. Splintering. Cracking.  
  
Mark shrinks into the darkness of the blankets, disoriented, but the urine smell is strong there and he’s still grossed out by it, so he throws them away from his head.  
  
Eduardo’s staring down at him. “Get up.”  
  
His left eye is so swollen, it’s practically closed. There’s a long strip of white over his nose and his lip has stitches. He walks with a limp that favors one leg.  
  
Mark notes, “You look satisfyingly terrible,” and Eduardo gives a weak, one sided grin.  
  
“Should see the other guy.”  
  
“I think he’s mostly busy trying not to move.”  
  
“Until now, at least.” Eduardo comes closer then, tries to pull away the blankets and Mark panics.  
  
He yanks them back. “No!”  
  
Eduardo pauses with his hands curled into the bedding. His expression could either be confused or annoyed, if he were able to make any expression at all.  
  
“You can’t lay here forever.” Annoyed then.  
  
He keeps yanking and Mark keeps pulling, but it’s not a fair competition. Eduardo’s had enough time to recover that he can actually walk and drive and kick in locked bedroom doors and probably make it to the fucking toilet, and Mark—  
  
The blankets get ripped away and he covers his naked crotch, feels his face go hot and figures the amount of embarrassment he feels must be some kind of record.  
  
Mark looks away. “I was about to take care of it…”  
  
Eduardo stares, sort of slack jawed, until he leaves the room. Actually, he pretty much sprints out the door, and if it weren’t for the distant sounds of running water filling the bathtub, Mark would think he fled the house all together.  
  
“Come on,” Eduardo says when he returns, paler than before, and if Mark can smell the very distinct aroma of vomit on his breath when he helps hoist Mark from the bed, then neither of them mention this.  
  
Mark doesn’t remember what dignity even is at this point. He hobbles alongside Eduardo, cupping his junk in one hand, whimpering and grunting and gnashing his teeth and if it weren’t so absolutely pathetic, then Mark would laugh at himself, in a masochistic sort of way.  
  
He eyes the tub like it’s a Herculean obstacle and considering he’s out of breath from walking the mere forty feet it took to get here, he supposes it kind of is. “I can’t,” he tells Eduardo.  
  
Softly, “You can.” Eduardo takes off his sweater and the shirt beneath it, propping him up against the counter.  
  
Their eyes meet when Eduardo gingerly lifts one of Marks feet over the lip of the tub. Mark winces and makes a humiliating sound but lets him repeat the process with the other.  
  
The water is hot. Not too hot, but hot enough that when he finally finds the will to sit down, it’s all Mark can do to smother his scream.  
  
At least Eduardo leaves bathroom for that part—Mark half lowered into the water, coaxing the raw skin between his cheeks to adjust to the temperature in brief increments of in and out.  
  
Eduardo’s doing things in the other room. Sounds of fabric and more water. Something abrasive. Scrubbing. A cough. His voice, clouded by distance, “Anyone here have a hairdryer?”  
  
Mark’s still panting. “Not likely.”  
  
More scrubbing. Another cough. A grunt. A heavy sound. Something falling. Eduardo’s huff.  
  
When Eduardo returns, Mark’s just sitting there, rigid and uncertain.  
  
There’s blood in the water.  
  
Some old.  
  
Some new.  
  
Eduardo kneels at the side of the tub, shirt sleeves pushed to his elbows. He reaches for the nearby washcloth he’d left for him and softly asks, “Can I…?”  
  
Mark starts crying again. He covers his eyes with a palm and nods, but secretly hopes Eduardo won’t call attention to it.  
  
He feels so fucking stupid.  
  
Eduardo doesn’t wash him good enough to get the blood off. He’s too gentle. He never scrubs. If it weren’t for the fact that Mark experienced the same polarity, he’d be totally unable to reconcile the person who fucked him raw with this other, tender, soft-eyed person.  
  
Mark chokes, “You bruised my rib,” but tries to make it more of a laugh than a sob.  
  
Eduardo forces a smile that’s all wrong. “You broke my nose.”  
  
“You broke my ass.”  
  
Eduardo counters so quietly Mark can hardly hear it, “You broke my heart.”  
  
Mark cries harder. Shields his face, even as Eduardo squeezes the washcloth against his neck, lets the water drip down his chest and pretends not to notice how it trembles.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Mark says.  
  
And the thing is, Mark really is sorry. He knew going into it what he was doing. He meant it. He wanted to hurt Eduardo. He wanted to humiliate him and break him in every way, and now—  
  
Mark’s finding it difficult to maintain that sentiment when he feels the impact of it himself.  
  
He takes a breath, waits for the crying to subside and chances a glance at Eduardo.  
  
He looks like he might be sick.  
  
Mark adds, “About breaking your heart, not about breaking your nose.” He’s hoping Eduardo will laugh or smile, even if it’s half-hearted.  
  
He doesn’t. “I don’t know what happened to me, Mark. I didn’t know I was—I knew I was hurting you, but I was too distracted to see—” He makes a vague gesture to the entirety of the tub but doesn’t elaborate. His eyes look wet.  
  
Mark shrugs, some of that numbness creeping back in. “I wanted it.”  
  
Eduardo scoffs past an audible lump in his throat. “You didn’t want _that_.”  
  
“The boundlessness of my masochism would clearly surprise you.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter.” Eduardo shakes his head, fists the washcloth until it’s drained of water. Then he looks at him and says, “I’m sorry. Mark. I’m _so sorry_.”  
  
Mark doesn’t tell him not to be.  
  
He washes Mark for what seems like hours. Every inch of skin he can see, a few he can’t, and some that, when he tries to reach, Mark flinches away from. He’s too gentle. He never scrubs Mark’s skin.  
  
The blood comes off with nothing more than patience and washcloth caresses.  
  
Eduardo helps Mark out of the tub and dries him off. The towel emerged from the closet white and falls to the floor with sections of pink.  
  
“We’re going to be late,” Eduardo says, helping him step into a pair of boxers.  
  
Mark doesn’t ask what for.  
  
They have to take Mark’s car to wherever they’re going to be late to, which isn’t really Mark’s car, but Sean’s shitty budget rental. Mark can’t sit. He cants his hips to the side and rests his weight on it, pressed into the door.  
  
Eduardo avoids bumps.  
  
Really, he like basically wastes five minutes going around one speed bump.  
  
Mark’s grateful.  
  
The place they’re going to ends up being a doctor’s office. Somewhere nondescript. It doesn’t look entirely legal.  
  
Eduardo gives Mark a careful look when they park. “This guy… he’s good. He’ll keep it quiet. They won’t ask questions.”  
  
Mark wonders, “Is this where you went?” and Eduardo nods.  
  
He lets Eduardo lead him into the building. It’s dated and quiet and there’s no one else in the waiting room.  
  
Eduardo sits.  
  
Mark doesn’t.  
  
Eduardo stands up.  
  
When Mark’s called into the back, Eduardo follows. It’s just a small, well-lit hallway into a back-room. It looks seedy and if Mark were perhaps in a better state of mind, he’d be running the other way.  
  
As it is, when the middle-aged man in his possibly fake white coat tells him to undress, Mark obeys insofar as Eduardo lifts his shirt above his head and helps him step out of his sweats.  
  
Most of it goes by in a blur. They guy pokes and prods _Does this hurt? How about now? Look at the scale on the wall and tell me how much it hurts. Can you move this? Can you cough? Deep breath._  
  
He tells Mark to bend over the table.  
  
Mark tries to lighten the mood by joking, “Not even going to buy me dinner first?” but it comes out monotone and wrong.  
  
No one laughs.  
  
Eduardo’s content to stand awkwardly by the door while the doctor pokes around inside Mark’s ass, but their eyes keep meeting by accident, and Mark can’t contain the tears when they come.  
  
Mark rolls his eyes even as they water, wishes he could close whatever flood gate was opened that’s allowing this stupid blubbery bullshit. Eduardo moves closer and reaches out, like he might hold his hand or touch his face, but seems to think better of it and just rocks anxiously back on his heels.  
  
Eduardo and the doctor talk. Mark tunes them out, doesn’t care what’s wrong with his ass, just wants this guy to get out of it already.  
  
He brandishes a syringe and tells Mark he’s going to stick this fucking thing into his anus and Mark just about knocks the table over in his haste to get away from it.  
  
Eduardo does hold his hand then. He crouches down close to Mark’s face and smoothes back his hair, shushes him even as he winces himself, and the needle is so fucking ridiculous and long that Mark swallows down vomit, clings to Eduardo arm and squeezes it—fucking strangles it—cries so hard that he can barely breathe.  
  
The shot numbs him, inside out.  
  
Mark lets Eduardo go.  
  
*  
  
He doesn’t stay long after he takes Mark home. He’d already scrubbed Mark’s mattress, flipped it over, and changed the bedding. The room still has a faint urine-type stench, but Mark doesn’t care.  
  
He hits the bed with all intentions of sleeping forever.  
  
“I have to go back to Harvard,” Eduardo says. He’s standing at the end of Mark’s bed, half coming, half going. “I’m sorry, but I. I can’t stay, Mark. I have to—”  
  
“You have to get away from here,” Mark finishes. He can see the way Eduardo looks at this place. This is no longer a house, and it’s no longer the house where Mark told him _…get left behind…_ , and it’s not even the house where they had a pretty epic fistfight.  
  
It’s something worse.  
  
It happened on the floor.  
  
“Yeah.” Eduardo gives him this look that makes it clear he won’t be back.  
  
Mark nods. “It’s fine.”  
  
And it is. There’s nothing more to be said. Nothing more to apologize for. Forgiveness is both default and unattainable. They could keep in touch, pretend like they didn’t push pull shove each other to the brink of insanity once upon a time. Exchange pleasantries. Ask how the weather is. Smiley faces in equal signs and upper-case ‘D’s. LOL’s with silence behind each screen.  
  
The thought of it makes Mark sick.  
  
They don’t say goodbye. Not really. Mark nods and Eduardo nods and neither of them cry, but they both know this is how it ends, and it doesn’t matter who threw the first punch or who looks worse or needed the most stitches or who has the most money or the least friends on Facebook.  
  
No one can win a war if the battleground is empty.  
  
*  
  
Mark takes a week off of Facebook. It’s unprecedented, and quite frankly, careless. It’s at a critical stage and they can’t afford it.  
  
It’s not that he doesn’t care, it’s just that he can’t stomach diving back into that version of himself just yet.  
  
He returns to a lot of questions. Namely, _what truck drove into your face_ and _what’s with the pillow in your chair_ and _should we alert the authorities_.  
  
He moves out of the house, first thing. Gets an apartment that’s modest in size and excessive in features. A place with no memories, where he can actually walk to the bathroom without feeling nausea and embarrassment.  
  
It’s the closest thing to a fresh start as Mark will ever get.  
  
Mark doesn’t tell anyone anything. It’s not their business. Not even Dustin who becomes his own version of hovery. Not even his mother who calls three times every day. Not even Sean who’s constantly on edge about the impending lawsuit.  
  
The lawsuit never comes.  
  
Most of Mark’s colleagues see this as a great victory. Eduardo is a coward. We put him in his place. What a pussy, can’t even lawyer-up right. Hope he spent that check on a new pair of panties. Let’s go out for drinks and celebrate the destruction of Eduardo S. Saverin.  
  
Mark tries not to laugh in their faces.  
  
He knows what Eduardo spent that check on.  
  
It was paid to a seedy doctor that didn’t ask Mark any questions.  
  
*  
  
So Eduardo doesn’t sue, but the Winklevii do. Mark is actually surprised at first, and even though he still believes they’re just privileged little assholes throwing tantrums, he decides to settle.  
  
He didn’t steal their idea, but it did inspire him.  
  
He used to think there was shame in admitting this.  
  
Mark‘s experienced worse shame since then.  
  
Facebook’s success is as swift as its creation. Doesn’t come without a lot of hard work, but all Mark has is time. He doesn’t have a social life. His brief experimentation in tolerating human contact has failed. He doesn’t have any interest in trying again, and he’s okay with that. He doesn’t feel the need to push his own boundaries. It’s better this way.  
  
That first year, Mark’s kept busy enough that he can barely remember his own name, let alone care about much else. He doesn’t go out often, if at all, and no one really bothers him. He’s content in his element, though, feels pride in quiet bursts and secret moments on his balcony with a tallneck beer to his lips and a cell phone in his hand.  
  
This is exactly what he wanted.  
  
This was his vision.  
  
This is Mark’s dream.  
  
He never uses the cell phone.  
  
*  
  
The second year is a little scarier. He has to meet people. Has to make appearances. Has speaking engagements that seem unauthentic only because it’s Mark who’s speaking. As if it’s his place to advise people. As if his opinion matters to the industry.  
  
It’s stressful.  
  
He starts seeing a therapist, recommended to him by both his mother and Chris, who’s come back out to Palo Alto after graduation to help head Facebook’s PR team.  
  
He doesn’t talk about Eduardo.  
  
Not for months.  
  
His therapist knows he’s always leaving something out, but she never pushes.  
  
He wakes up one day restless and antsy. He feels like something inside of him is clawing to break free. He doesn't know what it is or what it means or why his eyes are suddenly wet again when he hasn't cried in at least a year and nothing hurts, but he knows he saw Eduardo's picture on Chris' Facebook page the night before, and he's felt that way ever since.  
  
He tells his therapist.  
  
He tells her everything.  
  
“How did you feel when he left?” she asks.  
  
“Relieved,” Mark answers. “Empty.”  
  
Eduardo’s pretty much all they talk about after that.  
  
*  
  
Dustin and Chris try to set Mark up with a mutual friend.  
  
She’s nice.  
  
Her hair is pretty.  
  
He takes her out to dinner, even makes a big deal of it, suit and tie, pull out her chair, don’t look at her chest, give her the big smile, the one with the dimples, watch your language.  
  
He doesn’t kiss her goodnight.  
  
He goes home and pulls up Chris’ Facebook page, stares at the picture of Eduardo, puts his hand down his pants and rearranges his only memory of intercourse into something resembling normal.  
  
Mark and the girl never speak again.  
  
It all feels impossible. Back at Harvard, with Erica, she understood Mark’s situation. She was good at stuff like that. She didn’t have many expectations, for the most part. Of course, as time went on, dating Mark became more of a job and less of a relationship.  
  
He never had sex with her.  
  
He touched her hair once.  
  
It was really soft and she was more patient than Mark deserved and how can he expect to ever find someone like that again?  
  
“I feel like an alien,” he tells his therapist. “Like I don’t belong in my own skin.”  
  
She asks, “How long have you felt this way?” and Mark shrugs.  
  
“Forever, but recently just… more so. I guess.”  
  
She guesses, “Since Eduardo?”  
  
It’s the first time either of them can say his name without Mark wincing.  
  
And the thing is, Mark’s not over it. Any of it. Not the good stuff, not the bad stuff, and not the truly awful stuff. The fake memories Mark likes to make of that day are nice, but they’re nothing more than another method of punishing himself: This Is What You Could Have Had.  
  
“It’s not something you get over,” she says. “It becomes a part of you. It shapes you.”  
  
She asks Mark what he’s learned from that day with Eduardo, and Mark answers, “I’m not as smart as I thought.”  
  
Mark’s learned that his type of intellect means very little.  
  
“Do you think human contact might make you feel a little less alien, Mark?”  
  
“It’s raining,” he answers, watching the sky bleed against the window.  
  
It never snows here.  
  
*  
  
The third year is weird.  
  
In a good way.  
  
Mark’s finally growing into his position. He can stand in front of a crowded room and not feel like an imposter. He talks less than he should and shakes fewer hands than advised (none), but he can smile without making an inside joke with himself about the person he’s speaking with.  
  
His therapist is crazy proud.  
  
“Have you touched anyone this week, Mark?” She always asks that.  
  
His answer is always, “No.”  
  
There’s this guy in his building who always nods hello and Mark thinks about asking him out. He thinks maybe. Maybe if Mark explained the situation, this guy might understand and he might like Mark enough that he’d wait. He looks nice enough.  
  
Mark nods hello back, every morning. Every morning he plans to stop and call out, sprint up to the guy and make small talk about the new recycling notices or the mailbox upgrade or the loud lady in 72B who possibly owns an oboe.  
  
The guy moves out before he can.  
  
*  
  
He takes a flight home for the holidays. Mark’s actually looking forward to it since his sister gave birth.  
  
Mark’s an uncle.  
  
It’s like the most mindblowing thing to happen to him since Facebook. Mark hates babies, despises the sound and smell of them, but it’s different when it’s family.  
  
He’s excited.  
  
Suffice to say, his three hour layover in Dallas/Fort Worth has Mark downright beside himself. There are way too many people, for one. Too many chances for unsolicited contact. He keeps his arms pressed to his body and squeezes along walls, and if he bought every business-class seat on this flight just to make sure no one knocks elbows with him, then Mark isn’t snobby. His nerves just couldn’t tolerate it, even with the massive amounts of Xanax currently coursing through his blood stream.  
  
He stays at his gate. It’s empty most of the time and he can choose whatever seat he wants. When it isn’t empty, he can get up and move to another gate that is. He sends some emails while he waits, makes some memos on the back-up units at the server farm, since holidays are always stressful on the infrastructure.  
  
Also, he watches people.  
  
The first time he sees Eduardo, Mark’s sure he’s imagining it. It’s only a glance of a head over a crowd of ornery holiday travelers. Mark doesn’t pay it much attention. He sees Eduardo all the time.  
  
The second time Mark sees him, he’s convinced that he’s losing his mind. Still, his pulse gets all pattery because—  
  
It’s possible, right?  
  
Not probable, but.  
  
Possible.  
  
Mark doesn’t follow the guy. He’s only seen him from behind, and that’d be creepy. He’s typing out another memo on his laptop when the guy takes a seat at a parallel gate.  
  
Their eyes meet at exactly the same time.  
  
They each do a double take and Mark’s pulse goes from pattery to thunderous, because only one person on this earth looks at Mark and smiles like that.  
  
All teeth and squinty eyes.  
  
Mark returns the grin instantly, but he can’t tell in that moment whether or not he’s thrilled to see Eduardo or just plain fucking terrified.  
  
Fight or flight?  
  
Fight or flight?  
  
Fight or flight?  
  
Eduardo looks like he’s going to get up, sets his magazine down, but ultimately seems unsure of himself and waves instead, settles back in and never looks away.  
  
Later, Mark will distract himself with the petty details of triumph.  
  
Who made the first move?  
  
It’s insignificant in the grander scheme. Eduardo made the first move, he spoke to Mark six years ago in their Econ class and didn’t shy away. Mark made the first move, he invited Eduardo to that first AEPi party. Eduardo made the first move, he got drunk and touched Mark’s hand their second year. Mark made the first move, he let him.  
  
Really, they’d been making moves their entire friendship.  
  
So it’s Mark who makes the first move, this day. He stands up and puts his computer away, walks to Eduardo’s gate and sits two seats from him.  
  
Mark's never been much for flight.  
  
“Hi.”  
  
Eduardo’s smile is impossibly huge. “Wow, I can’t believe it’s really you! Small world, huh?”  
  
“Layover,” Mark explains, and if it weren’t for the way Eduardo looks at him, Mark might feel awkward that his company is unwanted.  
  
Eduardo responds, “Same,” and keeps gawking at Mark like that. Like he’s a mirage or something.  
  
The good kind.  
  
Mark asks, “How are you?”  
  
“I’m... I’m good, how are you? How’s Facebook?”  
  
Mark shrugs. “It’s doing okay.”  
  
“Modest,” Eduardo laughs. “Doing ‘okay’. It’s like the whole internet. Can’t even go to a webpage without being harassed about sharing it on Facebook.”  
  
Mark grins, but tries mostly to hide it. “You look great,” Mark says, and is surprised he manages to keep a straight face, because this seems to be a day for understatements.  
  
Eduardo looks _fantastic_.  
  
They have a superficial conversation about Eduardo’s quests in V.C. and Mark can’t help dwelling on the little facets of Eduardo that remain unchanged, even after all these years. He still motions wildly with his hands, like his voice alone just can’t properly convey the importance of it. His eyebrows are still crazy expressive and the lift of his cheeks when he says something in a low tone of voice is still Eduardo to the core.  
  
Except.  
  
He has a clean, straight-line scar that divides two halves of his lower lip.  
  
The bridge of his nose has a faint bump.  
  
“But I don’t know. It’s good work. I like it most of the time.” He finishes with a nod of finality, smile still swallowing his face.  
  
“I heard about Kinoo. And the shoe site. It’s impressive.”  
  
Eduardo’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise and Mark tries not to blush or look away. “You heard about those? Yeah, it was just… I got lucky, you know. It’s seventy-five-percent gambling anyway.” He laughs again.  
  
Mark disagrees. “I think, as far as Kinoo goes, anyone else would have turned them away, especially with projections so clearly in the negative, and god—the developer had his head shoved so far up his own ass he probably had to yawn to see his computer screen. My guess is… you took one look at that kid and knew he was an arrogant little shit who’d never let it fail. That’s not so easily detectable.”  
  
Eduardo almost looks touched, glances away and smiles into the distance when his face pinkens. “What can I say, I’ve seen it before.”  
  
Mark returns his smile and wonders, “When does your flight leave?”  
  
He walks with Eduardo to go check the board, where it’s revealed his flight’s been delayed by almost an hour.  
  
“Shit,” he says, frowning, but then turns to Mark and immediately asks, “Want to go get some coffee?”  
  
*  
  
“She’s definitely got the Zuckerberg hair,” Eduardo says of the photo Mark hands him. He’s staring at it so raptly, Mark considers waving a hand in front of his face.  
  
“She’s six weeks. It’s my first time meeting her.” He’s jittery and wired, and Mark doesn’t know whether his anxiety is a good or bad thing.  
  
He hasn’t touched his coffee.  
  
Eduardo doesn’t look nervous at all—on the surface. “Too bad I’m an only child. I’ll only know the satisfaction of sending infants Hanukkah gifts with international shipping charges attached.” When he hands the photo back to Mark, though, something is there.  
  
A tremble.  
  
So subtle Mark might miss it if he weren’t staring so intently.  
  
Eduardo buries his hands into his lap.  
  
They sit in the airport café for as long as it takes Eduardo’s plane to begin boarding. No topics of great importance emerge. It’s mostly just like Mark had always predicted. Small talk. Niceties. The weather is hot over here, it’s cold over there. No equal signs and uppercase ‘D’s, but their mouths mimic the sentiment, and it’s all much more genuine than Mark expects.  
  
When Eduardo’s called to his gate, Mark’s disappointed.  
  
Overwhelmingly, shockingly disappointed.  
  
He doesn’t really know what to do with himself, stands in the middle of the terminal and tries to remember what he even came here for.  
  
Eduardo hefts his bag over a shoulder and turns to Mark, squeezes the strap of it hard enough that his knuckles turn white. “So…”  
  
Mark nods. “Yeah.”  
  
“We could—“ Eduardo looks over his shoulder, as if he’s in the middle of committing some kind of insidious criminal act. “If you want to, of course. You can take my card and… call me or something. Or email me. Or send a postcard to my P.O. box. You know, whatever.” Eduardo laughs and raises his hand like he might give Mark one of those pseudo-affectionate pats on the bicep, and Mark—  
  
He doesn’t flinch so much as he flings himself out of reach, rigid and more distressed than one should be while medically sedated.  
  
Eduardo freezes, tries to hide a horrified expression and fails terribly. “Or… not.”  
  
“No,” Mark says. “I’d—that’s cool. We can do that. Let’s do that.” He takes the card from Eduardo’s suspended, outstretched hand and smiles. “It was good seeing you, Wardo.”  
  
He means it.  
  
He hopes Eduardo can see that.  
  
Mark watches his plane take off through the enormous windows, still buzzing. He feels like he just ran a marathon or just wrestled some kind of large animal into submission or just woke up after the long slumber that follows a three day coding binge.  
  
Like he did something right.  
  
*  
  
Mark normally spends a total of three hours out of his day coding.  
  
He hates it.  
  
He’s no longer a developer, he’s a CEO. It’s not like he doesn’t try. He has some great ideas, but the thing is, he starts them, pitches them to the team, and they take over.  
  
Facebook isn’t his anymore.  
  
It belongs to the world.  
  
So it’s not hard in the least to put Eduardo’s name back onto the masthead. This fact bothers Mark.  
  
“Are you looking to make a grand gesture?” his therapist asks.  
  
Mark shrugs. “I was just hoping to make it clear that I’m past it all.”  
  
“Are you?”  
  
Mark amends, “I was hoping to make it clear that I _want to_ get past it all.”  
  
“And the addition to the masthead was…”  
  
“Underwhelming.” No one has said anything, even a week later. Few even check it, and Mark’s completely certain that Eduardo isn’t in that minority.  
  
She finally asks the billion dollar question. “What is it you want from Eduardo exactly?”  
  
“Nothing,” he answers. “Everything.”  
  
*  
  
Eduardo declines Mark’s formally written letter offering him the position of Facebook CFO.  
  
Mark isn’t surprised.  
  
In fact, it’s exactly as he envisioned.  
  
Eduardo doesn’t call to talk about it. Neither does Mark. It’s all done on paper. Very professional. No faces. No voices. Just ink and stamp. Impersonal and more tangible than Mark’s entirely accustomed to.  
  
But, when Mark has to take a flight to London for a charity event, he does gather the courage to send Eduardo a text. It takes days. He types out at least ten before he finally sends anything, and even then, it’s done in his car, which is parked outside his therapist’s building. Just in case.  
  
 _Any chance you’ll have a layover at JFK on the 20th?_  
  
Eduardo responds, _No sorry. O’Hare on the 24th :(_  
  
Mark thinks about it. It wouldn’t be that difficult to move things around, to arrange to be at O’Hare on the 24th, but he doesn’t.  
  
He has legal send Eduardo another formal offer instead.  
  
*  
  
There is one advantage to the CEO thing, even if Mark no longer spends the entirety of his day doing what he enjoys most.  
  
Sometimes, most of the time, he gets to choose which charities to raise funds for.  
  
Mark used to hate it. He never felt right giving because everyone always thanked him and Mark doesn’t deserve thanks for it at all.  
  
He cringes through those parts and he doesn’t just write checks. He devotes entire chunks of prospective development ideas to causes. Tries to find ways to call attention to those in need with the greatest level of efficiency.  
  
His money, his brain. It’s all Mark really has to offer.  
  
The London benefit was for prematurity and birth defects (his niece was born preemie). He also puts a lot of time into raising funds for new computers in classrooms overseas. There are a few more, but this particular week, Mark is devoting some time to sexual violence advocacy.  
  
It was honestly chosen at random from a list of his twenty pre-decided upon organizations, because it’s hard to choose. If it were up to Mark, he’d just give them all everything, but there are too many, and turns out, not even a billion dollars can save the world.  
  
During the fundraiser, someone from the press asks, “Are you a victim of sexual violence?” and Mark pauses.  
  
It’s hardly a pause really. One could easily assume Mark’s choosing his words wisely or being slightly caught off guard because it’s an invasive question anyway.  
  
He answers, “No, but it’s still a cause very close to me.”  
  
And that’s that.  
  
*  
  
Eduardo is in his driveway. It’s night. Pretty late, really.  
  
Mark doesn’t know what to think of it. Truthfully, he’s been tired a lot lately and thinks he might have fallen asleep at the office.  
  
It’s very possible he’s dreaming this.  
  
“Wardo.” Mark isn’t scared or anything, but there is that edge of unease, like getting a phone call at four in the morning.  
  
Like something is wrong.  
  
“Sorry to just… show up,” he says, but realizes that Mark’s car is full of groceries and gestures to the window. “I can help?”  
  
He looks vaguely distressed.  
  
They carry the bags inside—there aren’t many—and Eduardo makes a joke about Mark actually feeding himself and it all feels very wrong.  
  
“Did something happen?” Mark worries. They’ve barely gotten inside and Mark doesn’t care. He drops the bags on the floor and instructs Eduardo to do the same.  
  
“What are these?” Eduardo asks, pulling a thick folder from his waistband.  
  
Mark glances them over and notes, “They’re formal offers. For—”  
  
Eduardo interrupts, “I know _what_ they are, I just don’t know why.”  
  
His hands are shaking.  
  
Mark explains, “Because we need a good one, and you’re the best.”  
  
Eduardo doesn’t even blink. “That’s a lie and we both know it, Mark. If this about—” But he doesn’t finish. Folds up the thick stack of papers and squeezes it.  
  
“It’s not a lie,” Mark promises.  
  
“You hesitated.” Eduardo looks at him, right in the eye, and Mark’s stomach sinks like lead.  
  
Eduardo looks _shattered_. “They asked you.” He doesn’t step any closer. “They asked if you were a victim, Mark, and you hesitated.”  
  
Mark stares at his shoes.  
  
Eduardo’s.  
  
They’re sneakers that in no way match his suit.  
  
If this were any other discussion, Mark would laugh at it.  
  
“Is that what happened?” Eduardo doesn’t come closer but he does bend down in an attempt to force Mark’s gaze to his.  
  
It doesn’t work. “You were there.”  
  
Eduardo bursts in a voice higher than raised, “I wasn’t there, Mark! That wasn’t me!” and Mark tries—he fucking battles not to—but he flinches away, knows instantly that Eduardo’s face has fallen.  
  
“See?” Eduardo says, and he’s staggered back a step, presses his back to the wall. “That, right there.”  
  
“That wasn’t what happened.”  
  
Eduardo begs Mark, “Can you please look me in the eye when you say that.”  
  
So Mark does. He rounds his shoulder and lifts his head and when he says, “That wasn’t what happened, Wardo,” Mark means it, through and through.  
  
Eduardo doesn’t look buoyed at all. “Then kiss me.”  
  
Since that’s a jarring and borderline ridiculous request, Mark scoffs. “No.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because I don’t want to.”  
  
Eduardo instantly smiles, however sadly. “You always tilt your head like that when you lie.”  
  
Mark bends down to fuss with a bag, hurries to change the subject. “You haven’t accepted any of the offers.”  
  
“I’m not going to.”  
  
“Right,” Mark nods. “Not yet. You have to explicitly ask for shares first.”  
  
When Mark’s confident enough that his face isn’t transparent-red, he looks up at Eduardo.  
  
His expression is comically puzzled. “What?”  
  
“I mean, I would give them to you outright if I could, but there’s all this legal red tape, and—“  
  
“You’re not making any sense.”  
  
“Come with me tomorrow,” Mark bargains. “To the offices. Just take a look around and you can make your decision then. If you still say no after that, I’ll tell legal to rein it in.”  
  
Eduardo shakes his head, looks utterly defeated. “Why, Mark? After all this time. Nothing’s changed.”  
  
Mark looks him in the eye when he answers, and his head tilts precisely _none_. “That’s not true.  
  
*

Mark meets Eduardo in the office parking lot hours before the day shift arrives. Eduardo looks like he hasn’t gotten any sleep at all, which isn’t much of a surprise since he only left Mark’s house five hours ago to check into his hotel.  
  
Mark hasn’t slept a wink.  
  
He had his therapist on conference call at four that morning.  
  
He’ll have to remember to pay her better.  
  
“So,” Mark begins, shoving both fists into the front pouch of his sweater. “This is it. Or the parking lot at least. You’ll have your own space.” Mark pivots around in a three-sixty and realizes he doesn’t really know how factual this statement is.  
  
Eduardo nods. “Okay.”  
  
He’s taking this seriously.  
  
Mark is trying very hard not to smile.  
  
He leads him in through the front, even though Mark always goes in through the back, because he wants to give Eduardo the full experience and all.  
  
“There’s a buzz,” Mark says. “It’s weird and… abstract. It’s hard to explain, but it’s there. Especially in the mornings. Do you feel it?” He’s practically bouncing on his toes with it.  
  
Eduardo gives him a wry look. “Are you sure that isn’t your sleep deprivation talking?”  
  
Mark’s smile falls.  
  
“No, I was joking,” Eduardo hastily says. His eyes are sad. Guilty. “I do feel it. It’s… infectious optimism. Right?”  
  
“Infectious optimism.” Mark rolls it around on his tongue and decides, “Yeah, I like that. It’s a good description.”  
  
Mark hopes Eduardo gets it.  
  
It feeds him like caffeine all throughout the tour. Mark shows Eduardo his very favorite development ideas, takes him to the third floor where two out of three employees are just kids, but can code circles around Mark and still have time to collate error reports. If his voice seems reverent during most of it, it’s because it is.  
  
Mark is already old news. He isn’t making history anymore. He’s just giving the people who can a platform.  
  
“You should see the kids Harvard is kicking out nowadays. MIT. Stanford. They’re ridiculous, Wardo. Super human. They make my brain look infantile.”  
  
Eduardo laughs, seeming surprised. “You actually manage to sound more proud than offended by that.”  
  
Mark says seriously, “I am.”  
  
They go to the fifth floor where, truthfully, Mark rarely steps foot.  
  
It’s all financial crap and usually, during peak hours, completely crowded.  
  
He gives Eduardo the green light to poke around. There’s only one person in the office, and he’s answering phones. Eduardo takes more advantage of this than Mark expected.  
  
He inspects every board, peeks into every folder, lifts every post-it, and deactivates every screen-saver. He’s incredibly thorough in his scrutiny, sitting down at one point to click around on a seemingly random computer, brows knitted closely together in concentration.  
  
Mark pretends to flip through the most recent edition of P.C. magazine as he waits.  
  
Really, he couldn’t take his eyes off Eduardo if he tried.  
  
Finally Eduardo pauses in the middle of the office, takes a long, steeling breath, and says, “God, I’m starving.”  
  
Mark instantly stands. “We have a cafeteria. Breakfast?”  
  
*  
  
They eat on the East side so the sun hits directly on them. It’s always cold in here to Mark.  
  
“What do you think?” Mark asks, barely able to contain it.  
  
Eduardo, who’s mid-bite into a breakfast burrito that runneth-over, hurries to chew and swallow under Mark’s assessing gaze. “It’s good, but a little messy.”  
  
Mark rolls his eyes, “I meant—“  
  
“I know, I was just joking.”  
  
“You seem to do that a lot nowadays.”  
  
Eduardo hides a grimace, but admits, “Defense mechanism.”  
  
“I noticed.”  
  
He pushes the burrito aside and meets Mark’s gaze. “It’s amazing. Everything. From the front door to the cubicle upstairs that’s for some reason decorated in graphic zombie memorabilia.”  
  
“Terry’s an enthusiast, what can I do?” Mark shrugs.  
  
Eduardo adds, “Terry is about to lose the company three million dollars in shitty app deals.”  
  
Mark frowns. “So I can fire him then.”  
  
“No.” Eduardo shakes his head. “Terry is also responsible for five million in ad revenue. He could just use a little push in the right direction.”  
  
Mark suggests, “You should provide that.”  
  
“Mark.” Eduardo sighs, squints as he stares out the window. “What you’re asking is crazy. I’d have to completely uproot my life for the same company that ruined it.”  
  
Mark argues, “It wasn’t the company who did that.”  
  
“You are the company.”  
  
“Wardo.” Mark laughs. “Look around you.”  
  
It’s _that_ time of morning. The moment when everyone has filtered in and filled spaces with warmth and laughter and Monday-grumbles and smells and heel-clicks and _life_. Mark can’t touch it—Mark can’t touch anyone at all—but he can appreciate that infectious optimism doesn’t materialize from thin air.  
  
“I haven’t been the company since Kirkland,” he explains.  
  
“It’s crazy,” Eduardo says, awed eyes still fixed to the crowd. “You just woke up one day and made this… thing. Now look at it. Isn’t it crazy, Mark?”  
  
Mark’s answer is simple. “It’s my home. It’s where you belong.”  
  
Eduardo’s smile doesn’t fade completely. Just mostly. “There’s a flaw in this whole plan.” Mark raises an eyebrow and Eduardo shrugs. “In which I’m still in love with you and this apparently turns us into sorry excuses for human beings.”  
  
Mark’s throat closes momentarily. He doesn’t know what to say or what to do, but his first thought is _run_ and his second thought is _how could you loving me ever be a flaw?_  
  
But Mark knows better than that.  
  
He also knows better than to think it's Eduardo's love that turns them into sorry excuses for human beings.  
  
Eduardo just hasn't had a chance to realize this yet.  
  
“Well…” Mark says this mostly to buy time to think of something witty and neutral to respond with, but what follows seems to shock Mark just as much as it does Eduardo. “I suppose—I’m not opposed to a mutual effort on either side to—”  
  
Eduardo stops him, face pale, “God, Mark, no. That wasn’t an ultimatum. I was just—I just wanted to throw it out there. Lay it on the table, you know?”  
  
Mark nods quickly, face hot. “Of course, I just meant—”  
  
Mark has no idea what he meant.  
  
He needs more therapy.  
  
“I just wanted to be clear,” Eduardo continues. “I know it and you know it. I don’t want to be… manipulated because of it. I don’t want it to be my liability. Again.”  
  
“I wouldn’t,” Mark insists. “Wardo, you have my word, as little as it’s probably worth to you.”  
  
"And I can't ever be that person again," he continues, visibly upset. "It's my biggest nightmare, Mark. Thinking that I did... that... on purpose. With intent. That maybe it wasn't like I remember and you said no, or—"  
  
"Stop." Mark can't hear this. He can't.  
  
He stares Mark in the eye and whispers, "It makes me sick, Mark."  
  
"That's not what happened. It's _not_."  
  
"Can you tell me it doesn't ever feel like it? When you chose that charity, it was because... somehow, even if it's only a little, you can relate."  
  
Mark covers his eyes. "Stop it."  
  
"You're crying."  
  
Mark hisses, "You're hurting me."  
The silence after is deafening, makes the pulse in Mark's ears seem thunderous and scary.  
  
"I'm sorry," Eduardo breathes. "God, I'm so sorry. I wasn't even thinking. I don't want to hurt you anymore, Mark."  
  
And the truth is, Mark is just fed up.  
  
He's done with having this cloud over their heads and this brick in his chest.  
  
It can't be forever.  
  
It can't.  
  
He squares his shoulders and looks Eduardo in the eye. "You're going to hurt me. It's inevitable, I'm human. You want to know what happened that day, Wardo? We were young and pissed off and fucking stupid. I didn't know what I wanted and I asked for the wrong thing. This whole debate is circular and painful and this is the only time—the only time, Wardo—I will ever tell you that you didn't rape me, because while you're busy blaming yourself for doing it, I'm busy blaming myself for asking for it, and I don't need fabricated guilt on top of my real mistakes, which in case you haven't noticed, I have more than enough of."  
  
Eduardo looks like he's been punched in the face.  
  
Mark eats his breakfast like that. In stunned silence that should probably be awkward to him, but isn't.  
  
He feels like an invisible weight has been lifted from his shoulders.  
  
Mark wasn’t raped and Eduardo’s in front of him and Mark can look him in the eye just fine, thank you very much. Plus, he's starving. "You going to eat that?" He points to Eduardo's burrito and waits for him to shake his head.  
  
Mark finishes it in three bites.  
  
"I just—" Eduardo looks at Mark with big, apologetic eyes. "I had to be sure and I couldn’t trust my own memory. The last thing I wanted was to—"  
  
Mark waves a hand in dismissal. "Now you know."  
  
Eduardo reluctantly agrees, “Yeah, I know.”  
  
The buzzing tension of the moment abates so gradually that it feels like hours pass before Mark’s shoulders can loosen, or Eduardo’s posture can relax into something resembling comfortable.  
  
“I’ll need some time,” Eduardo finally says.  
  
He looks relieved and cautious and beautifully thoughtful.  
  
Mark doesn’t look away when he grins.  
  
*  
  
It doesn’t take much time. In fact, Mark’s pretty sure it only takes the walk from the cafeteria to Dustin’s office, where he all but forces Eduardo to ride him piggyback to the basement rec room.  
  
They look ridiculous—two grown men piggyback riding into an elevator.  
  
Mark feels a swelling in his chest at the sight of it that isn’t all laughter.  
  
But Eduardo is smart.  
  
He makes them sweat for two weeks before his formal letter of acceptance arrives with a bonus addition of a five percent share request.  
  
It’s granted instantly.  
  
*  
  
His therapist, always with the same question. “Have you touched anyone this week?”  
  
Mark is annoyed. “No, I’ve confronted someone who _didn’t_ rape me violently, was able to finally convince us both of this after years of misplaced fault, and then offered him possibly the best paying job in the country. Can’t a guy get some credit?”  
  
The whole touch issue, it just hasn’t been very high on Mark’s list of priorities. His therapist wants him to try. Just reach out and touch someone. It’s super easy, and it’s not like Mark is physically incapable of doing this, it’s just that Mark doesn’t like himself very much.  
  
He likes himself less when he’s that close to someone else.  
  
It makes his chest tight.  
  
The thing is, Eduardo had been right about many things. The hesitation. The choice of charity. The fact that Mark still—sometimes when things are a little too much—has to go home and lock himself into a room so he can put his head in his hands and let it loose.  
  
Yes.  
  
The crying is still a thing.  
  
“The capacity to cry,” his therapist says, “is just as much a part of being human as the capacity to laugh.”  
  
So Mark has that.  
  
He’s a little more human.  
  
He’s a little more flawed.  
  
“I don’t want to want it,” Mark explains of touch. “It makes me different.”  
  
She thinks he’s talking about sex and hormones having the tendency to drive human motivations, which has merit. Mark does think about sex. Truthfully, Mark thinks about sex at least three times per day and in the privacy of his own home with the convenience of his right hand.  
  
But Mark doesn’t mean sex. It'd be nice, but he can live without it. It doesn't drive him. It doesn't dictate his actions or make him incapable of logical thought.  
  
He’s referring to something else. Touch is a connection. Warmth. Comfort. Tenderness. Security. Dependence.  
  
Love.  
  
Overcoming that fear, it just hasn’t been very high on Mark’s list of priorities.  
  
*  
  
Eduardo doesn’t contact him after the formal acceptance, but Mark doesn’t really expect him to. He thinks Eduardo keeps in touch with Dustin those three weeks following though, only because Dustin keeps playing Thin Lizzy around the office and screeching along, _The Boys Are Back In To-ow-ow-own_.  
  
Mark doesn’t push it. Even when he’s at his desk long after everyone’s gone home, staring into the distance and pondering variations of Eduardo’s laugh, he doesn’t call him to hear it.  
  
He gets a text the day before Eduardo’s to arrive at the office that says, " _apartments here are ridiculous_ ", and Mark replies, " _i miss you_ ".  
  
He deletes it, of course.  
  
But it’s true.  
  
Instead, he responds, " _me = excited for tomorrow_ ", which is the same sentiment, minus all the complications.  
  
Eduardo says, " _me too_ ", and Mark falls asleep with the phone by his pillow. It's glowing with an unsent text that's punctuated by a dissatisfied, blinking cursor.  
  
" _i cant wait to touch you._ "  
  
*  
  
Mark loses all his courage the second Eduardo comes into view from the parking lot. He looks well rested and ready to tackle anything, eyes bright, hair combed back, large grins beamed at passersby.  
  
Mark’s waiting out front in reception. The lady there is giving him annoyed looks behind his back, probably because when her boss is so close, she can’t spend that first hour of her morning on her MMORPG account.  
  
Mark’s been in the lobby exactly four times the entire duration of their existence in this building.  
  
Twice have been for Eduardo.  
  
“Bitchin’ shoes,” is how Mark greets him, brow raised down at the same sneakers he’d been dying to criticize weeks ago.  
  
Eduardo laughs it off, but Mark can see his cheeks color, just slightly. “I’ve adopted this philosophy about comfort over appearance.” He looks at Mark then, uncertain. “Is that okay here?”  
  
Mark gives Eduardo a look.  
  
He laughs. “Right, I’m asking the guy who probably owns twenty of the same flip-flop. I know how sneaky the left ones can be.”  
  
“Tricky suckers, those left flip-flops. Having spares is just practical.”  
  
Eduardo gives him a soft, fond smile. “That’s you. Always thinking.”  
  
Mark could touch Eduardo then.  
  
He doesn’t, though. “So am I to assume that you actually find suits comfortable, or is this adopted philosophy only applicable to footwear?”  
  
Eduardo shrugs. “One step at a time.”  
  
Mark agrees, “That’s how the lefties disappear.”  
  
“Funny, I thought it was just your penchant for throwing them at things and-or people.”  
  
“The left ones are just so aerodynamic.”  
  
“Am I actually going to work today, or are we just going to stand around and banter about shoes?” But Eduardo’s grinning.  
  
From ear to ear, actually.  
  
It’s impossible how easy it all is.  
  
Mark leads him up to his new office, which is bare and truthfully a bit dismal. He encourages Eduardo, “Feel free to decorate it however you like—graphic zombie memorabilia included.”  
  
“I wouldn’t want to encroach on Terry’s territory.” Eduardo lifts a bag from his shoulder as he inspects the room, thoughtful. “Maybe mummies.”  
  
Mark scoffs, “Seems a little passive aggressive.”  
  
“You’re probably right,” he sighs. “Better just settle for modern-contemporary.”  
  
“Pity.”  
  
“I’ll do it right, Mark.”  
  
“I have complete confidence in your design abilities.”  
  
Eduardo stops before Mark and looks at him. “That’s not what I meant.”  
  
Mark looks back and because of this, he can detect the brief, outward twitch of Eduardo’s fingers. Just a flicker of movement, like a muscle memory, and Mark knows if things were different, Eduardo would be touching him right this second. Maybe on the hand, or the arm, or the shoulder, who knows.  
  
He buries it into his pocket instead.  
  
Even though it’s terribly awkward and stiff and probably not at all indicative of anything resembling sincere, Mark reaches out.  
  
He pats Eduardo’s arm.  
  
Just once.  
  
He promises, “So will I.”  
  
He knows from staring into the reflection as he waits for the elevator that even minutes after Mark’s left, Eduardo's still frozen in the same position.  
  
*  
  
Eduardo fits in perfectly, just like Mark always knew he would. That first day, Dustin makes Mark and Eduardo both take an hour at the end of the day to celebrate.  
  
They drink beer on the roof and reminisce about Harvard and Kirkland.  
  
Dustin laments Chris’ residency to the east coast.  
  
Eduardo ruffles his hair from its carefully combed arrangement and complains about California’s pizza.  
  
Mark’s content to listen to their half-hearted bickering without adding any himself. He doesn’t have anything to complain about.  
  
Since they do all have full plates, and for the most part everyone is too busy to do much else, they mostly let Eduardo be. Mark does keep the door to his office open, though.  
  
He is available.  
  
When they can all catch each other, they eat lunch in the cafeteria huddled around laptops and cell phones and folders brimming with paper. They catch up in random, scattered moments that are small unless swept into a pile.  
  
Mark learns that Eduardo leased an apartment, modest in size and excessive in features. It is a lot like Mark’s old one, and it feels very temporary. Mark tries not to dwell on it, finds himself wanting to ask why he didn’t buy a house and he is staying isn’t he and where are the roots you’re supposed to put down here. But he doesn’t want to ruin the moment they’re having over stacks of click analytics about the pros and cons.  
  
“Loud people,” is Mark’s con about apartments.  
  
“No pets,” is Eduardo’s.  
  
So that’s how he learns that Eduardo likes pets. A lot of the little details happen like this; gleaned from something seemingly insignificant.  
  
He gets to see Eduardo less than he’d like. The first official meeting Eduardo attends, he steals the whole show. Big gestures and intense eyes demand attention that’s always given. He’s always prepared. He never stutters.  
  
Not everyone likes him. Some people can’t stand him, which is assuring to Mark. It just means he’s doing a good job, not that Mark ever worries.  
  
All of this isn’t to say they don’t stumble every now and then.  
  
Eduardo tries exactly once to touch Mark. It’s mostly an absentminded attempt to steer him away from Mailroom Maggie, who Mark’s about to bump into since he’s staring down at a halfway written text. It’s nothing more than a press against his spine. A nudge in Eduardo’s direction.  
  
Mark flinches away from it, startled enough that he drops his phone.  
  
He didn’t mean it. It was just reflex. No one touches Mark, no one has in years. It’s not something he can just wake up to expecting one day.  
  
Mark almost asks Eduardo to do it again, _I’ll be good this time_ , but Eduardo’s already averting his eyes and tightening his jaw and he looks more angry with himself than anything, and Mark doesn’t like that.  
  
He doesn’t try again.  
  
*  
  
And all this isn’t to say Mark’s the only one with baggage.  
  
What they’re doing—Eduardo’s transition to CFO—it doesn’t happen overnight. There’s a lot of paperwork and clauses and agreements put on paper that make it to Mark’s desk before anything at all.  
  
The first time Mark hands one to Eduardo, all crisp vanilla and clean type, Eduardo says, “Cool, I fax it to Gretchen. Anything else?”  
  
It’s not even an important document. It doesn’t include anything regarding Eduardo’s shares or his pay or his hours or the terms they’ve already agreed upon.  
  
It’s mostly about his parking permit.  
  
If Mark’s hurt at all (and he doesn’t have the right to be), he doesn’t let on. He nods and says, “Sounds good.” Mark gets it back the next day, photocopied three ways to Sunday, shadows of abuse imposed in layers of ink, a little off kilter.  
  
It happens again that same week when Eduardo’s prompted to sign off on the updated workplace harassment policy.  
  
Dennis from HR asks Mark about it. “Should I be worried the new CFO won’t condemn sexual harassment without the approval of his lawyers?”  
  
Mark explains, “It’s complicated.”  
  
Everything goes through Eduardo’s legal team—and Mark doesn’t have any illusions—Eduardo is definitely employing an entire team of them. Maybe a whole firm for all Mark knows. He must send them three to five documents per day.  
  
He sometimes gets this feeling when the two of them are alone discussing just about anything, that if he turns around he’ll find them there, a perfect row of lawyers with yellow legal pads and patient, judgmental stares.  
  
So it’s no surprise that when Mark’s therapist asks, “Have you touched anyone this week?” Mark answers, “I’m not really sure.”  
  
*  
  
He doesn’t talk to Eduardo about it. It’s pointless. There’s nothing more Mark can say about the past or contribute to the situation. He apologized years ago and knew it would mean very little. Actions speak louder than words.  
  
He’s too busy living the apology to bother speaking it. It’s not Mark’s baggage to carry anymore. He has enough of his own.  
  
He catches Eduardo early one morning when that ‘infectious optimism’ is at its peak. “I feel like we never see each other outside the office,” he says.  
  
That would be because they never do.  
  
Since Eduardo’s winded from the walk to the building and is poking around on his cell phone, his response is distracted. “Yeah, we should get out more. Dinner or something.” But he does give Mark an encouraging grin, so—  
  
“Sounds like a Friday thing to me. I know the boss, he’ll let us off for a night if we threaten him with precarious social situations.”  
  
Eduardo barks a laugh that makes his eyes flash bright. “Let’s do that.”  
  
The doors to the elevator close before Mark can assemble words into a sentence, but he is scarily pleasant for the remainder of the week.  
  
*  
  
Mark makes a big deal of it, suit and tie, don’t look at his ass, give him the big smile, the one with the dimples, watch your language.  
  
Eduardo looks surprised when they meet at the restaurant. “This is the place?”  
  
Mark struggles not to fiddle with his tie. “It got great reviews—you still like French cuisine, right?”  
  
“Yeah, of course, I just didn’t think you did.”  
  
He’s right. Mark hates French cuisine. “They have a pretty extensive menu,” he says instead.  
  
Eduardo looks down at his shoes—the sneakers—and then at Mark—in his suit. He looks very confused. “I feel weirdly underdressed.”  
  
Mark rolls his eyes and leads Eduardo inside. He made reservations. The staff is happy to see him. They pull out all the stops—including chairs—even though Mark never asked.  
  
The downhill descent of the night is practically instant from there.  
  
The waiter (garcon, le serveur, whatever, Mark sucks at French) is regaling Eduardo with wine choices, all raised chin and sleek hair. Mark listens to Eduardo respond and is more surprised than necessary. Of course Eduardo knows and is apparently fluent in French.  
  
The waiter says something, Mark think it sounds like _co-pain_ , which is ironic only because—  
  
Eduardo shakes his head, laughs, and is pink-cheeked even after the waiter leaves. He leans over the space between them and explains to Mark, “He thinks we’re on a date. Awkward.”  
  
Mark doesn’t laugh. “Well, we’re kind of on a date.”  
  
Eduardo laughs again. His expression flattens directly after. “Oh my god, you’re serious.” When the waiter pours the wine, he regains his composure just enough to down the flute in one go.  
  
He motions for the waiter to keep it coming. “I didn’t know,” he says after.  
  
“That had occurred to me.” And if Mark is loosening his tie and following Eduardo’s lead with the whole wine-chugging, then it’s only because there’s no salvaging his dignity at this point.  
  
Might as well get drunk.  
  
“I thought we were just hanging out.”  
  
“Yeah, we are.” Mark suggests, “Let’s forget about it.”  
  
Eduardo’s still babbling nervously, “You weren’t specific and—a date was honestly the farthest thing from my mind—” He looks at Mark then, eyebrows pushed together in frustration. “Mark, I can’t even touch you, and we’re on a date?”  
  
Maybe it’s the wine talking, but Mark is momentarily defensive. “My issues are the reason we can’t date? When was the last time you signed something without a panel of legal advisors?”  
  
Eduardo doesn’t seem surprised in the least that Mark has noticed. “Relationships don’t normally include written agreements, Mark. The same can’t be said for _human contact_.”  
  
“No, but the same could be said for _trust_ ,” Mark argues.  
  
“Trust is something you earn—you more so than most when it comes to me.”  
  
“Yeah. Same.” Mark levels him with a look that possibly isn’t fair. He’s not holding that against Eduardo anymore. He’d let Eduardo touch him if he tried a little harder, if Mark were just a little more prepared when it happened.  
  
But it doesn’t matter.  
  
The night is ruined. Eduardo is deflated and closed-off. Mark can tell by the way he presses his back against his chair and spends more time staring at the tablecloth than eating his first course.  
  
They leave before either of them is full.

  
*

  
Mark spends most of his weekend in crowded, public places.  
  
Someone has to touch him eventually.  
  
*  
  
Mark is accepting that he and Eduardo might not be a possibility. There’s too much history, and not enough of the good kind. He arrives at Facebook on Monday ready to begin the long journey of taking what he can get. His company has an amazing new CFO and Mark still has a friend. It will have to be enough.  
  
It’s enough.  
  
So when Eduardo comes marching through the door of his office—and Mark knows an Eduardo-march, he’s seen it before, closes his laptop and might hide it in some obscure bottom drawer if there was enough time—Mark won’t lie.  
  
He is terrified.  
  
“Dennis said you had something for me,” Eduardo says when he stops at Mark’s desk.  
  
His jaw is tight.  
  
Mark’s first thought is, _calm down it’s just an email and internet policy agreement_ , but Eduardo is already scanning his desk, searching out the easily recognizable HR letterhead.  
  
He plucks it from the corner of Mark’s desk and asks, “This it?”  
  
“You’re not getting reprimanded or anything, it’s just—” But Mark doesn’t finish, because Eduardo pulls out a pen, presses the paper to the desk and signs it.  
  
Just like that.  
  
After, he clicks his pen and it sounds like something final and decided-upon and beautiful and Mark doesn’t know what to say, but he knows exactly what it means.  
  
Eduardo asks, “We good?” and when Mark can bring himself to tear his owlish eyes away from the perfect ‘E’ and loopy ‘S’ and flourished ‘n’, he nods dumbly at Eduardo.  
  
But Eduardo doesn’t leave. He leans against Mark’s desk and stares down at his sneakers, curls a palm around his neck and waits there, silent.  
  
If Mark’s a little slow on the uptake, then who could blame him. “Oh,” he says, shooting up from his chair. He walks to the door and closes it—slams the fucking thing, really.  
  
He is not available.  
  
When he turns to Eduardo, they’re both smiling in that same nervous, infectiously optimistic way. “I can’t believe you just signed that.”  
  
Eduardo laughs, uneasy. “I know, I didn’t even read it.” His eyes flicker to where it sits, just briefly.  
  
Mark stands close enough that he could touch Eduardo, but he doesn’t. “It’s just politely asking that you not watch or exchange porn with company property, and honestly, it’s barely enforced.”  
  
“Right,” Eduardo laughs. “I can’t see Dustin agreeing to that.” His head’s canted down so when he smiles at Mark it’s done through a fan of thick lashes and caution.  
  
He touches Mark hand. Just a brush of fingertips against knuckles, but Mark’s heart adopts this rhythm that suggests it might jump out of his chest and shove its foot up Mark’s ass. Mark touches him back and they’re both watching their fingers, and when Mark presses his palm into Eduardo’s, their fingers thread together and it’s not enough.  
  
It’ll never be enough.  
  
Mark kisses him. This soft, fragile sort of thing that has them staring at each other even as their lips press, testing and careful. It's chaste and Mark can feel a foreign, straight-line, slanted scar against his lips, and he's kissing Eduardo, but he's also kissing it.  
  
 _Sorry._  
  
Later, Mark will distract himself with the petty details of nostalgia.  
  
Who reached out first?  
  
It’s insignificant in the grander scheme. Eduardo did, he took a flight to Seattle at the right time. Mark did, he stood up and went to him, even though he was terrified. Eduardo did, he kept in touch. Mark did, he offered him the job. Eduardo did, he showed up. Mark did, he was waiting.  
  
Really, they’d been reaching out their entire friendship.  
  
It's just that now, they finally have something to touch.  
  
*  
  
Mark and Eduardo are dating.  
  
No really. Like, officially. There’s a do-over of the French place and everything. It involves much less wine and much more actual eating. Mark kisses Eduardo good night, against his car door, tentative tongue and all.  
  
Eduardo doesn’t touch Mark a lot—at first. It’s gradual, just like before, just like Mark needs. A hand on the small of his back, a brush against his arm, a nudge to his shoulder, and then, a caress of his cheek, a kiss on his neck, a thumb snuck beneath his shirt hem.  
  
Mark’s a lot less conservative. He has very few reservations about tonguing Eduardo’s mouth and shoving a hand up his shirt and putting his fingers into his hair and making it messy and leaving him in the elevator swollen-lipped and breathless and flushed and gorgeous.  
  
He encourages Eduardo sometimes, just pressing himself close enough that Mark’s sure he can feel the hard length of him against his hip, and it’s not like Eduardo doesn’t notice. He’ll tear his lips away and look at the ceiling and groan, let Mark nibble on his throat and, if Mark’s very lucky, he’ll grind into it, let Mark feel him, too.  
  
It’s just that after, when the elevator stops or Eduardo’s phones rings or Mark has to get in his car and actually drive away, nothing else happens.  
  
Nothing.  
  
Weeks of something barely resembling foreplay go by before Mark sets aside a night for _more_.  
  
He isn’t stupid—they won’t have sex.  
  
There are other things they can do, though.  
  
He mentions this to Eduardo in a roundabout way. “What is your stance on mutual masturbation?”  
  
Eduardo is mid-spoonful into his bowl of soup and ends up spraying it pretty much everywhere. He sputters, “Oh my God, Mark…”  
  
He explains, “We’re basically boyfriends. I find you sexually attractive and, it may be presumptuous but I’d like to think it’s mutual. No pun intended.”  
  
Eduardo still hasn’t recovered, is mopping up the front of his shirt with a soggy napkin. “Uh...”  
  
Mark continues, “I know we’re doing the whole unspoken ‘take it slow’ thing, which is good. I like it. Mutual masturbation is both incredibly intimate and void of actual contact. I think it’s a good middle ground.”  
  
Eduardo shrinks into his seat, peering over his shoulder at the rest of the restaurant. “Could you please stop saying ‘mutual masturbation’? People are staring.”  
  
“What do you think?”  
  
“I think…” Eduardo pauses, seems to consider this for long enough that Mark’s sure his suggestion is being taken seriously, and meets Mark’s gaze. He nods. “My stance is favorable.”  
  
Mark’s standing.  
  
“You don’t mean _now_?” Eduardo hisses.  
  
“Uh, I actually do.” Mark’s already taken his keys from his pocket.  
  
“We haven’t even finished our appetizer,” Eduardo argues.  
  
Mark scoffs, “Is the soup _that_ good?”  
  
Eduardo looks into his bowl, stirs it once, and looks at Mark. _Really_ looks at Mark. The long, neck-to-knee-to-neck look. He decides, “Okay, let’s go.”  
  
*  
  
They make out on Mark’s couch long enough that his chin burns from Eduardo’s five-o-clock-shadow. He thinks about putting his hand in Eduardo’s lap and _squeezing_ , but presses himself into the opposing arm of the sofa and touches himself instead.  
  
Eduardo’s watching with rapt, glassy eyes, sinks into his seat and mimics Mark, grabs the bulge at the front of his pants and squeezes it.  
  
Mark unzips his pants.  
  
Eduardo follows.  
  
For Mark, it’s weird jerking off in front of another person. It’s not like it usually is. It’s quieter in some places, noisier in others. He watches Eduardo’s hand moving and tries to match the rhythm with his own, licks his lips and settles into it.  
  
Eduardo sighs, looking on heavy-lidded, presses his foot into Mark’s and moves his hips, fucks into his hand.  
  
Mark doesn’t last long. His breath gets embarrassingly heavy and he’s watching Eduardo watch him and his belly gets tight and he pushes himself up, tries to get close enough to see if that’s a bead of moisture on the tip of Eduardo’s—  
  
He makes a sound in the back of his throat that he couldn’t smother if he tried.  
  
He doesn’t know what to do with it. He looks around for a frantic moment and wonders why he doesn’t have tissues in his living room.  
  
“Here,” Eduardo orders. His thighs are shaking. “On me.”  
  
Mark doesn’t pause. “Where,” he asks and Eduardo looks down at his hand.  
  
Mark should have probably confirmed it, but it doesn’t matter whether or not Eduardo really wants Mark to ejaculate all over his dick, because Mark hovers over him, supports his body by grabbing the arm rest above Eduardo’s shoulder, and does it anyway.  
  
“Mark,” Eduardo’s panting. His hand move faster, easier, wet sounds against flesh, and he looks up at Mark and his mouth falls open and he fists the loose-hanging fabric of Mark’s pants and comes, too.  
  
After, when they’re both a little more put-together and a little less sticky, Mark looks at Eduardo and tiredly asks, “What’s your stance on oral sex?”  
  
*  
  
“Are you even packed yet?” Eduardo asks. Mark’s busy doing something on the computer, but he can feel the heat of Eduardo’s disapproval on the back of his neck.  
  
“Yes, I’m packed. I’m not that incompetent.”  
  
Eduardo looks for the bags himself. Mark is actually coding for once and he thinks Eduardo knows it’s a big deal.  
  
“Did you pack extra towels?” he calls from down the hall.  
  
“Again,” Mark says. “Not incompetent.”  
  
But it doesn’t bother him that Mark and Eduardo have fallen somewhat back into their old roles. Not entirely, of course. Mark’s not lying. He has changed a lot. He’s too old to go days without eating and months without doing laundry. He is a perfectly functioning adult with dentist appointments and flight itineraries and a retirement plan and everything, and he’s only twenty six, geez.  
  
Still, though.  
  
Eduardo being around, it’s not as if Mark’s being babied, like before, in college.  
  
It’s just kind of like he’s got Mark’s back. “Did you take a Xanax?” he asks from the hallway, bag of prescriptions in hand.  
  
Mark pauses in his typing to give Eduardo a guilty look. “Not yet.”  
  
He gives him one with a glass of water and lets Mark keep coding. He knows they have to leave soon, and he’ll close the laptop any second now, he just needs a few more minutes…  
  
A few more minutes turn into an hour and before long, Eduardo is touching his shoulder, gently nudging. “Baby, the car’s here.”  
  
Mark packs his laptop up, but opens it again when they’re in the car.  
  
“Can you please take a break?” Eduardo asks, and Mark can tell by the tentative voice he requests this in that he doesn’t want to ask.  
  
Mark puts the laptop away instantly, giving Eduardo a half-apologetic, half-annoyed glance as he does. Eduardo might not realize it yet, but Mark will never tell him no, or ignore his pleas for attention, or brush him off. Eduardo has Mark in the palm of his hand and he doesn’t even know it.  
  
They never sleep over at one another’s place, so these business trips, well—they’re like fifty percent business and fifty percent pleasure. Like a vacation, but with added business scheduling. Mark tries to maintain that balance, and he’d be lying if he said they’ve perfected it.  
  
But Mark will never choose between Eduardo and work.  
  
There is no choice to make.  
  
They arrive at the airport just early enough that they can hang out in the lounge. Mark doesn’t really like the fancy airport lounges, as he’s usually dressed down enough to draw too much attention, but Eduardo likes the scotch and atmosphere, so Mark always follows him there.  
  
Plus, less people.  
“Do you need another?” Eduardo asks, brandishing a prescription bottle.  
  
Mark does.  
  
Eduardo knows just about all there is to know about Mark’s anxiety. He’s even met Diane, his therapist. They had a session once, just the three of them. It was awkward and after, Eduardo wouldn’t touch him for days.  
  
Mark’s learned he doesn’t hold a monopoly on fear or apprehension.  
  
It got better.  
  
Eventually.  
  
Eduardo goes to check the status of their flight, and Mark thinks about it. He looks at his bag and sighs, fingers itching to complete that one last function, and then maybe test it, and then maybe tweak it, and then maybe test it again, and then maybe tweak it some more, and then maybe—  
  
Okay, Mark knows better. Still, when Eduardo returns, Mark’s mood is a little sour.  
  
“Delayed,” he informs Mark of their flight. Their eyes meet over Eduardo’s glass of scotch. “Snow.”  
  
Mark perks. “Snow?”  
  
Eduardo nods.  
  
“How much, you think?  
  
Eduardo shrugs. “You know what they say about snow being like sex—”  
  
“You never know how long it’s going to last or how many inches you’re going to get.”  
  
They share an awkward laugh and look in separate directions.  
  
Only where sex is concerned, Mark knows how long it would last (not long at all) and how many inches he’d get (eight and some change).  
  
He’s talked about it with his therapist, and for the most part, she’s encouraging. But, “It’s not uncommon for homosexual relationships to be void of penetrative intercourse.”  
  
Mark didn’t stress it for a long time. The having penetrative sex. If Eduardo feels as though their relationship is lacking because of it, he never lets on.  
  
They talked about it once.  
  
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Eduardo offered. “You could be the one to do it… I don’t dislike it.”  
  
And it’s not like Mark wouldn’t want to fuck Eduardo. He’s pretty sure he could, just name the time and place, Eduardo would be game. But the thing is—  
  
It feels like a copout. Like if Mark had taken a job from Eduardo, it wouldn’t have been the same. Go all, or go home, that’s Mark’s philosophy. So he’s been preparing himself. Even if it never happens, at least Mark will never again know that moment of uncertainty, _how bad will this hurt?_  
  
He ends up sleeping for most of the flight, too medicated to even itch for a keyboard, but on the drive to their hotel, Eduardo orders the driver to pull over.  
  
He touches Mark hand and says, “Come on,” so they get out.  
  
They’re in front of a park that’s blanketed in white, dressed like a bride. Mark finds the deepest, most remote patch of snow within eye distance and falls backward with a soft _crunch_.  
  
He stares up at the flurried sky and sighs.  
  
Eduardo just _gets him_.  
  
Mark makes a snow angel and doesn't care how juvenile and cliche it is. He’s getting wet and soggy and cold and it’s awesome. “Let’s move Facebook north,” he suggests, “Maybe Dakota.”  
  
Eduardo laughs, eyes crinkled at the corners, and settles into Mark’s impression of a wing. “You’d get sick of snow within a week. Remember Harvard? You bitched about it all the time.”  
  
“The snow is always whiter on the other side,” he agrees.  
  
“We have an hour to check in, give or take.” Eduardo gives Mark a tender, secret look that cuts straight to Mark’s belly, makes him stir in his pants.  
  
He knows what will happen. Mark will go to his room and Eduardo will go to his, but they’re both on the same floor and they both know, in all likelihood, that only one room will be used. It’s almost a game on these business trips—who breaks first?  
  
It’s usually Eduardo, and he usually shows up at Mark’s door, fidgety and impatient.  
  
Mark will usually smirk. “Took you long enough.”  
  
They’ll kiss and end up on the bed, shirtless and panting, hips pressed against hips, rutting and huffing.  
  
They do that a lot. The frottage thing, it drives Eduardo crazy. Mark’s always on top, pressing into him, and Eduardo is always below him writhing. He usually puts his hands over his head to stop himself from grabbing Mark’s ass and guiding him into the rhythm he wants, but he’ll always breathe hot into Mark’s ear and encourage him with soft, sweet, filthy things.  
  
That’s the good thing about business trips and hotels, aside from snow. They have the choice to share a room, but if anything goes awry, they have a contingency. It’s not like sleeping over at one another’s place where, if Eduardo grabs Mark’s hair or Mark makes the wrong kind of demand or if the mood just gets ruined in general, they can’t just leave without making it a _big thing_.  
  
It takes a lot of pressure off.  
  
No pun intended.  
  
The first time they ever sixty-nined was during a business trip. The first time they ever lied in a bed together, completely naked, was a business trip. The first shower they took together, the first time they slept next to each other.  
  
Hotels are for feeling it out, seeing how it goes, testing the waters, etc.  
  
They stare at each other like that for most of the hour, charged and comfortably anticipative, and when Eduardo kisses Mark his lips are cold and he touches Mark’s cheek and makes this breathy restrained sound like he could just eat Mark up even though he simply helps him to his feet and brushes the snow from his back and Mark is ready.  
  
Just like that.  
  
*  
  
Okay, maybe not _just like that_.  
  
Mark knows Eduardo might not be ready, and it’s unfair to just drop it on him that Mark wants to have sex sex. So Mark ducks away that evening and does some last minute shopping.  
  
When he returns to the hotel, Eduardo is waiting at his door. “This feels familiar,” Mark greets him, pushing the bag into the pouch of his hoodie.  
  
Eduardo looks tired. The first day of conferences are always the most exhausting. People to meet, hands to shake, rooms to prepare and schedules to tweak. Mark’s hired a lot of people to worry about all that for him. Unfortunately, Eduardo is one of them.  
Lucky for him, tonight, Eduardo doesn’t have to do a thing.  
  
“I need liquor,” he replies, following Mark inside.  
  
Eduardo has some rum from the minifridge, but since he’s taken a muscle relaxer, Mark declines the offer to join him.  
  
Eduardo shrugs and collapses on the bed, loosens his tie and kicks off his sneakers before asking, “What’s in the bag you’re not-so-discreetly hiding?”  
  
Mark swallows and pulls it from his pocket, removes the package from the bag and probably blushes all the way to his toes when he extends it to Eduardo.  
  
Eduardo blinks at it owlishly before finding Mark’s eyes. “Is this like… a gag, or—”  
  
“I was planning to use it.”  
  
Eduardo takes a deep breath, raises his eyebrows, and ventures, “On me?”  
  
Mark shakes his head.  
  
“Mark,” he sighs. He’s holding the thing like a bomb. Like it might explode and send little bits of everything splattering onto the walls. “This seems sort of… I don’t know.”  
  
“I have one at home,” Mark informs him. Eduardo’s eyes snap to his, a flash of shock. “Two, actually. There’s a slender one I started out with and then I worked my way up. In girth.”  
  
Eduardo looks fairly speechless. “Uh.”  
  
“I like it,” Mark assures. But then, in the spirit of honesty adds, “Well, not at first. I couldn’t even get it inside me and then—” No, Mark’s not going to be _that_ honest. Eduardo doesn’t have to know about the crying… “Anyway, I began taking muscle relaxers and persevered until it fit. It didn’t feel bad or anything, but it didn’t feel good, either—not until I got a bigger one. After I started using that, it was…”  
  
Mark’s not sure how to explain it. It’s nothing like the orgasms he’s used to having. It’s not even close to the ones he has with Eduardo, which are mindblowing in and of themselves. No, these orgasms are like every cliché. Seeing stars. Blacking out. Seeing white. Electricity. His whole body feels it.  
  
The smell of silicone sort of gets him hard now.  
  
He finishes with an emphatic nod, “I really like it.”  
  
Eduardo, who is definitely gawking, chokes, “You’ve been fucking yourself with dildos?”  
  
He quite obviously has, but when Eduardo says it like that… Mark looks away, suddenly ashamed. “It was just—I wanted to know if it could feel good.”  
  
“No, I’m not—” Eduardo heaves a sigh and lifts himself from the bed, touches Mark’s cheek. “Don’t be embarrassed. I’m… surprised. But not in a bad way.”  
  
“In what way, then?” Mark chances a glance up, just in time to see Eduardo’s wince.  
  
“That you’d even want to try it, for one, but also…” He speaks faster at Mark’s expression. “It’s kind of stupidly hot to even think about.”  
  
Skeptical, Mark searches his face for any sign of dishonesty. “Really?”  
  
And Eduardo’s eyes are hooded, distant as if unfocused. “Really definitely.” He presses his body closer, nudges Mark’s ear with his nose. His voice is really breathy, just a hint of disappointment. “But Mark, I don’t know if I could…”  
  
“No,” Mark interrupts. “I was kind of hoping you might like to just maybe—watch?” He wants Eduardo to see. How far he’s come, how far they could go, how much Mark likes it.  
  
“Watch?” If Eduardo’s eyebrows shoot any higher on his forehead, they might disappear altogether. “Like. Sit here. While you. With that.”  
  
Mark nods. “That is how ‘watching’ is loosely defined in this context, yes.”  
  
Eduardo kisses Mark hard, which Mark thinks could be an affirmative.  
  
*  
  
Eduardo’s moved the armchair to the end of the bed, facing forward.  
  
He’s sitting there, lower than usual, shirtless and unkempt.  
  
His pants are unzipped.  
  
His eyes are dark.  
  
He’s chewing on a knuckle. “Does that feel good?”  
  
“Not really. It just stretches me out.” Mark’s laid back on the bed, legs spread, fingering himself. “It’s sort of boring, actually.”  
  
Eduardo doesn’t seem put off by Mark’s honesty at all, which is good since Mark’s decided long ago to never fabricate his own pleasure.  
  
“You’re hard,” Eduardo notes.  
  
“You’re half naked,” Mark points out. “Also, anticipation.” Satisfied that he’s stretched enough, Mark lubes up the dildo.  
  
It’s bigger than the one he has at home.  
  
He’s excited.  
  
Eduardo sits forward when Mark’s ready, rapt as he spreads his legs and begins pushing the dildo against his hole. With a deep breath, Mark bears down into it.  
  
There’s always a moment when the dildo passes that first ring of muscle, Mark doesn’t like. It only hurts minimally, but it’s not so much the pain as the location of it—memories and all. But it doesn’t last long. That’s what the muscle relaxers are for. They make him loose and pliant, easily penetrated.  
  
Mark pushes onto it slowly, moving his hips instead of his wrist, pushing down with his shoulders. He watches Eduardo, the way his shoulders tighten and flex, the downward slant of his eyebrows.  
  
He’s worried. “Does it hurt?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Eduardo exhales a relieved breath. “Does it feel good yet?”  
  
Mark laughs, which makes Eduardo relax further into his seat. “Not yet, but if I—” Mark pushes it deeper, thrusts his hips so he can angle it up and in. He makes a soft, surprised sound. “Right there. That feels—” Mark hits it again, and again, until he’s stretched enough that the dildo slips right up against it.  
  
Mark closes his eyes, drops his head back, and groans.  
  
“How does it feel?” Eduardo’s voice has dropped an octave. Soft and quiet, an edge of regret.  
  
Mark can hear fabric shifting. “Like—god, I can’t even describe it. Sweet. Sharp.”  
  
“You’re dick’s leaking.” Eduardo’s voice is stilted, breathless, “Do you always get wet like that?”  
  
Mark’s fucking himself with the dildo now, almost too distracted to answer. “Yeah,” he says, reaching down to fist it. “I think of you.”  
  
Eduardo groans at that and Mark sees him stroking himself in the chair, not slow enough to be leisurely, not fast enough to be hasty and impatient. “You're so sexy,” he breathes.  
  
They don’t talk much after that. Mark fucks himself and Eduardo fucks himself, and they watch each other fuck themselves, but then Eduardo stands up, presses one knee into the bed and leans closer.  
  
He watches Eduardo’s hand, moving faster and faster, and his abs, jumping and sinking, and he pushes the button on the dildo that makes it vibrate and just about screams.  
  
“Wardo,” he gasps, fists himself harder, feels like every square inch of his body is shaking with it and his hand’s cramping and his toes are curling and if he was wet before, then he’s downright soaked now.  
  
Eduardo says, “Come on, baby,” and touches Mark’s calf, watches so intently that Mark thinks he can feel him there, between his legs, pushing inside of him and pressing against his chest, breathing into his ear, thrusting, pushing, hips against thighs, Mark’s dick trapped against those jumping abs, twitching.  
  
Mark sucks in a breath, “Wardo, I’m going to—“  
  
“Come on,” Eduardo says. “Come on my dick, baby.”  
  
Mark cries out, feel his stomach contract so tightly that his chin is pulled to his chest where he can do nothing but watch ribbon after ribbon of come paint his chest and stomach. Mark whines nonsensical things, some of which include, “Wardo Wardo Wardo,” and “Your dick feels so good,” and “Fuck me just right,” and keeps pushing the dildo into that spot for as long as it lasts.  
  
When he’s coherent enough to notice, Mark realizes that Eduardo’s come all over the bed and is currently panting down at Mark, eyes bright and glassy.  
  
“Fuck.”  
  
Mark silences the dildo’s buzzing vibration, tries to catch his breath. “Twenty minutes,” he tells Eduardo.  
  
Eduardo looks at the clock, disoriented. “That took twenty minutes?”  
  
“No. That’s how long it usually takes,” he offers, “until I can do it again.”  
  
Eduardo takes a handful of lube for himself and asks where the condoms are.

 


End file.
